May 2014 election: Madison Village voters to decide on police levy, reducing size of council

Madison Village’s approximate 2,100 registered voters will find a pair of village issues in front of their ballot in the May 6 election: a 3.8-mill police levy and a charter amendment proposing to reduce council seats from seven to five members.

Police levy
Voters will consider the same continuous levy they narrowly voted down on the May 2013 ballot by a margin of 203-191.
Since that defeated levy, two full-time patrol officers at the village Police Department have taken jobs in other communities, cutting its full-time staff in half. Because of shrinking revenue and budget cuts, village leaders decided not to fill either position. The department has assigned part-time officers and the police chief to patrols in order to maintain 24/7 coverage, Police Chief Dawn Shannon said.
If approved, the levy will bill property owners $133 per $100,000 in valuation while raising $240,774 every year in a special police fund, according to the Lake County Auditor’s Office.
With the extra revenue, Shannon said the village will fill one or both of the vacant positions. The money also would be used to replace aging cruisers, three of which have more than 110,000 miles recorded, she said.
The village’s Police Department is made up of a full-time police chief, two full-time police officers, 15 part-time officers, an auxiliary officer, a full-time police/mayor’s court clerk, a part-time police clerk and a part-time school crossing guard, Shannon said.
Madison Village Council budgeted $539,000 this year for the Police Department. Two years ago, the police budget was $650,000, Council President Kenneth Takacs said.
Takacs said the police took “the biggest hit” out of the $1,144,000 budget because of a combination of factors. The loss of approximately $63,800 since 2011 in the state’s Local Government Fund is one reason.
Takacs said another reason is because greater spending had to be allocated to road and bridge improvements and stormwater projects, the latter of which hasn’t normally been done.
“Essentially, you’re looking at an erosion of a budget by 40 percent because of road improvements and stormwater projects,” Takacs said.
If the levy fails, Takacs said this year’s police budget will need to be reduced down to $450,000.
For the Police Department, that means auctioning off cruisers to repair the ones with more service life, cutting vehicle patrols to reduce added wear and tear, and cutting services like sending an officer to vehicle lockouts that are not life threatening, and reports of property damage.
“A possibility that I don’t want to think about would be that the department may not be a 24/7 operation,” Shannon said, elaborating that would mean an officer may not be around to answer a call every hour of the week. “As I said, I hope I don’t need to think in those terms.”
A lot of the department cuts are similar to those village officials warned would happened if last year’s 3.8-mill police levy failed.
But those cuts didn’t happen, because village officials didn’t expect that two full-time officers would leave the department soon afterward.
“I guess if you could say it was a benefit to the budget that those two officers left, but it didn’t benefit this community,” Shannon said.

Charter amendment to reduce council
Four years ago, voters approved a village charter that increased the size of council from six to seven members, and now voters will decide whether they want to reduce the size down to five.
Councilman Kenneth Cahill, who drafted the petition this year for the charter amendment, said the village currently has as many council members as Mentor, a city more than 14 times the size of the village. He said reducing the size of council over a four-year period will save the village $10,000 each year. Currently, a council member receives $5,400 a year in compensation with no benefits.
The feeling isn’t shared by all village leaders. Councilman Mark Vest admits he did sign Cahill’s petition, but it wasn’t because he intends for vote in favor of the charter amendment.
He said he fears that reducing the size of council could lead to smaller voting blocs “taking the show.”
“It’s easier to get three people together to agree rather than four people together to agree,” Vest said.
He said that is why Madison’s Charter Commission recommended increasing council to seven members five years ago.
“In the last 10 years, there has been more discussion now on issues than ever before, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing,” Vest said.
Mayor Sam Britton also has spoken out against the charter amendment proposal. He told the News-Herald this week he doesn’t see a problem with the 457-residents per-council member ratio and that the charter amendment isn’t the right way to “cut out government.”
“For the $10,000 we’re going to save, it is not worth the worry of having three loose cannons run the village,” he said.
Cahill said those arguments are “absolute nonsense.”
”Can’t there be an undemocratic voting bloc with four members? That’s where their logic fails and they know it,” Cahill said.
If voters approve the charter amendment, one council seat will be eliminated in the November 2015 election and the second seat will be eliminated in the November 2017 election.
Vest, Cahill and Kenneth Takacs will be the first three council members on the chopping block.
“I think this is the most equitable way we can reduce council so there isn’t any suggestion that anyone is protecting themselves,” Cahill said.
Vest said he is not worried about future elections.
“I just want to see council run smoothly and for people to see what they come to expect and pay for,” Vest said.

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About the Author

Simon Husted joined the News-Herald in February 2013. The Buffalo native and Kent State graduate covers schools and community issues in Fairport Harbor, Perry Township, Perry Village, North Perry, Madison Township and Madison Village. Reach the author at shusted@news-herald.com
or follow Simon on Twitter: @SimonSaysNH.